For most of her life, Sunnie Mull has been surrounded by a web of divorce. Her grandmother was divorced. Her mother divorced while Sunnie was a baby and then again when she was 12. And Sunnie herself divorced in 1991 at the age of 28, coping with the custody decisions to be made for her daughter and son.
In August of 1991, she married Mark Mull, who was also divorced and has one daughter.
Sunnie’s children, Danielle Knopp, 9, and Kyle Knopp, 7, live with her in Aurora and see their father often. Mark’s daughter, Samantha, 6, lives with her mother only a few blocks from the Mulls. But no matter how convenient or obliging former spouses are, putting a stepfamily together is not as easy as putting together a puzzle.
Six months after Sunnie and Mark’s marriage, they discovered that the pieces weren’t quite fitting. Opinions differed on disciplining the children. Sunnie’s children were not bonding with Mark. There was some adjusting to be done.
“We had the typical stepfamily problems,” said Sunnie Mull, 32. “Blended doesn’t mean instant bliss.”
The newlyweds first sought help and then decided to read all they could about the topic and try to help themselves. They not only were able to solve their own problems, they discovered that they could help others caught in the same bind.
In January 1993, Sunnie and Mark Mull founded Extended Children of Divorce (ECOD), a non-profit support group for children and adults involved with the children of divorce. The group serves to help children of divorce, divorced adults with children, adults who are helping a child through divorce and stepfamilies.
ECOD, Sunnie said, is steadily growing and meeting what one counselor calls “a screaming need for help.”
ECOD offers twice-monthly adult support group meetings in Glen Ellyn and Aurora and eight different children’s support groups held once a month for ages 3 to 18. Guides (adults who are children of divorce or who have been divorced themselves) lead the groups under the direction of a youth leader (the group is looking for a new one). Another part of the organization, the consulting division, aids divorcing couples in constructing their own joint parenting agreements.
Support group meetings are at the First Congregational Church in Glen Ellyn. There are also monthly meetings at the Mulls’ home while they search for a space in Aurora.
Founding and establishing the organization has taken as much time as a part-time job, said Sunnie, who works full time as an administrative secretary for a consumer products company. She’s also president of the PTA at her children’s school, McCleery Accelerated School in Aurora, this year.
Sunnie and Mark, 31, a firefighter and paramedic in Carol Stream, estimate that they have spent more than $2,500 of their own money getting the organization off the ground.
“I don’t mind, though,” Sunnie said. “We knew that we needed help, and we couldn’t find help that we could afford. I’m sure there are many people in the same situation. We finally realized that we . . . could help ourselves, by reading, listening, talking. Now we want to help other people learn to help themselves as well.
“Our main priority is the children. Adults can try to help themselves. They can read books and ask for help. Children have to depend on us for much of that.”
Children of divorcing or divorced parents may exhibit signs of tearfulness, moodiness, sleeplessness, fear of being left alone, anger and conflicting loyalties.
Carol Fullington, a divorced mother with a young son at home in Carol Steam, said she has been to many groups that address her needs but not her son’s. Then she found ECOD.
“It helped me to understand what my son was going through,” she said. “I was in a domestic violence situation. I thought if we got out of the situation everything would fall into place. It does to some extent, but there are things you don’t think about. You think that unless your child is acting out, everything’s OK, but there are many issues to deal with. ECOD helped us in that way.”
It helps in other ways as well, said Dave, a divorced parent from Westmont who did not want his last name used. ECOD has saved him from picking names of attorneys and counselors from the Yellow Pages. After eight years of marriage and two years of separation from his spouse, Dave was divorced and is involved in a custody battle for their only child.
“The chance to talk to other parents in similar situations and to get personal referrals to attorneys and for help is what was valuable to me,” Dave said. “What I took away from ECOD meetings were the good tools to find counselors, pediatricians, the help that my son and I need to get through this.”
Mark Mull describes himself as Sunnie’s helper rather than a co-founder of the group: “She’s the brains of the organization and the motivation behind it all. I’m here to help her out,” Mark said. “I feel like I can also be of some assistance in making the men at support groups feel more comfortable. Groups tend to be largely made up of women.”
Peter Gerlach, a family counselor in Forest Park who has worked with stepfamilies since 1981, said the facts behind stepfamily problems are frightening. According to Gerlach, 90 percent of stepfamilies in America are founded on divorce, and 70 percent of American stepfamilies end in divorce. “Those children in a stepfamily are at risk of double trauma.
“There are no other groups in the greater Chicago area that attempt to provide services that Sunnie and her helpers are trying to offer,” said Gerlach, co-founder of Step Families of Illinois, a support group for adults. “The community is better off because of what she’s trying to do. She’s dedicated and very energetic and very professional in what she’s doing.”
What often happens to support groups for divorced people is that no one has a clear idea of what the group is going to do or how to keep it going, Gerlach said. “Often the groups flounder because there’s no clear communication. It becomes a bitch session: `Ain’t it awful.’ People start falling away after they’ve aired all their complaints about their ex, and then the group fails.”
He does not expect the same fate to befall ECOD because of the professional approach the Mulls have taken. “One thing Sunnie is up against is that, often, adults following divorce and remarriage go into denial as part of self-protection and don’t come to a group like ECOD,” he said. “The ongoing challenge is to help them feel safe by coming to a group. The adults need to know that coming to ECOD is a sign of strength.”
Parents going through divorce or remarriage may assume that the kids need no extra help and that if they do, they’ll help them after they get their own act together.
“You can’t put the children on hold for three years while you get your act together,” Sunnie said. “You have to make yourself healthy to help the children, but there are ways you can help yourself and still help them at the same time.”
It is not uncommon for the phone to ring late at night at the Mull house, a call from a parent in need of advice or just someone to listen. Nor is it uncommon for Sunnie to refer people to the ECOD library that the Mulls have established. At each meeting, the Mulls provide a list of self-help books and articles they keep at home. Members can check them out for their own use.
ECOD’s consulting division charges $25 ($12.50 to be paid by each parent) to help divorcing parents draw up their own joint parenting agreements. “You can do it yourself, negotiate and get along, or you can let a man in a black robe who doesn’t even know you decide how and when you will parent your child. Why leave it to chance? Make your own destiny and then learn to live with it,” Sunnie said.
For more information about ECOD, call 708-906-1880.
